All posts for the month September, 2017

An open letter to Chancellor Folt, the Board of Trustees, and the Board of Governors:

The Progressive Faculty Network and colleagues from across the UNC-CH campus stand with students and other members of the community in opposition to the presence of “Silent Sam.” The statue celebrates people who defended slavery, a violation of the most basic of human rights. Installed 48 years after this country made owning another human being illegal, the monument also implicitly honors the system of racial apartheid that propped up white supremacy after the U.S. Civil War and influenced white nationalists in South Africa and Nazis in Western Europe. Beginning in the 1950s, in response to African American-led civil rights activism, some components of legal segregation, particularly in public education, were dismantled. Today, however, racial inequality in this country is maintained by physical, economic, electoral, legal, and cultural violence committed by and on behalf of white people against people of color. “Sam,” the gun-toting image of white, masculine power, is neither harmless historical “speech” nor “silent.” Decades of protest and the current student-led demand to take the monument down demonstrate that we hear “Sam’s” anthem to racism loudly and clearly. Remove the statue now and you can be on the right side of history.